papyrus

A hobbyist gardener has made miniature sheets of paper from their own dwarf papyrus plants, sharing the result with friends in game development circles. The post nods to ancient Egypt, where papyrus was used for writing, and jokes that their future Akh — the Ba and Ka of Egyptian belief — will thank them for millions of years. They also encouraged friends to keep tending their soil and plants.

A filmmaker who grew up in Gulu City, Uganda, has shared how childhood play shaped his career. Making toy cars and a 'box TV' from papyrus and paper as a child in a refugee camp, he is now a director of photography and mentor at Sisi Film Lab, an initiative supporting young filmmakers.

Researchers made their own carbonized papyrus scrolls, spiked with lead-based ink, to test ways of reading the real Herculaneum scrolls damaged by Mount Vesuvius. The study found the lead-laced ink glows up to 25 times brighter under X-rays, which could help locate and decipher text on the genuine charred scrolls without unrolling them.

Researchers have deliberately burned a modern papyrus scroll to recreate the conditions that carbonised the ancient library of Herculaneum, buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. The experiment suggests traces of lead in ancient ink could reveal which of the still-unopened scrolls contain readable text, helping prioritise which fragile artefacts to scan next in efforts to recover words lost for nearly 2,000 years.